Rent Elizabethtown on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Cameron Crowe
Directed by: Cameron Crowe
Starring: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Bruce McGill, Judy Greer, Jessica Biel, Paul Schneider, Loudon Wainwright III, Paula Deen
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer
Plot
During a hometown memorial for his Kentucky-born father, a young man begins an unexpected romance with a too-good-to-be-true stewardess.
Verdict
I really like this movie. It captures the things you feel, you wish you
felt, as well as the moments you want to share and experience. It's
birth, death, and everything in between. It's a romance movie at it's core, but it's so much broader than that as it looks at family and legacy. The romance is a fantasy, but you want it to work. It's this one bit of hope in Drew's life as he faces professional failures and the death of his father. It's not realistic, and it's not supposed to be. That's the allure; the escape.
Watch It.
Review
This begins with Drew's (Orlando Bloom) colossal failure. He's a shoe designer that didn't just fail, he screwed up on a legendary scale. Drew marches to the head boss's office to be fired, recounting how he got there and the sacrifices to create this shoe. He wonders, what went wrong? The boss, Phil (Alec Baldwin), guilt trips Drew about what this failure will cost the company. What we're not told is how the shoe failed. Drew was earnest with the design and devoted himself to the product. He's now despondent. You can't blame him. He's saddled with not only the failure and guilt, but the waste of time this show now is for all of the time input. I wanted to know what went wrong, but the shoe is a plot device.
When I first saw this movie, I knew exactly how Drew felt. He had all the potential in the world and nothing to show for it. This feels like a genre defining millennial movie, much like Fight Club defined Gen X.
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| Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst play Drew, Claire |
Family business in Kentucky diverts Drew's despair and gives him a distraction. He heads to his father's small hometown. This captures that hometown nostalgia. It's like a completely different world apart from everything elsewhere. Drew meets all this family he hasn't seen in forever. They reminisce about the past, and that feels so real. I've been to family events just like that.
Out of town and lonely, Drew calls the stewardess he met on his flight, Claire (Kirsten Dunst). They chat the night away, both just needing someone. Drew is in this hotel for a funeral, on the same floor as an exuberant, raucous wedding. It's a point the movie doesn't miss making.
Part of this movie plays into the romance fantasy. Drew and Claire meet and connect, hitting it off and talking on the phone all night. They decide to meet. It never happens, but in this one moment it works out. Except it doesn't. They meet, the conversation falters, but they still had that night. The other part is playing with expectations. We expect this romance that then surprisingly falters, but that's not the end of it.
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| Kirsten Dunst, Orlando Bloom play Claire, Drew |
Drew delivers a eulogy stating everyone had a different version of the deceased. That is the characters in this movie. We see snippets of Drew and Claire. They are who we need them to be and who they need each other to be. It's also about perspective. Drew has to reconcile his happiness with Claire and his recent failure as well as this small town versus living in the city. The service is a wild ride. It takes the movie into a fantasy as we see tap dancing, a performance of Free Bird, and a burning paper mache bird.
This is two movies. It's a rom-com between Drew and Claire mixed with a coming of age road trip. Drew meets his family and on the way home takes the road trip he never got with his dad. That gives him time to process everything that's happened. All of that is with the subtext of Drew being one of the greatest failures ever and no one even knows yet. Claire leaves Drew a final scavenger hunt. It's impossible to plan out as seen, but this movie is fantasy. It's the thing you want to be true, and I'll grant it that. This movie touches so many emotions, and while it sometimes defies belief that's also part of its charm.
SPOILERS
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